Rose Everlasting
by castrovalva9
Summary: The Tenth Doctor and Rose find a way to be together forever. No spoilers.


Title: Rose Everlasting  
Author: castrovalva9  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: none  
Pairing: Ten/Rose  
Summary: The Doctor and Rose find a way to be together forever.  
Disclaimer: "Doctor Who" is property of the BBC.  
Notes: Beta read by Kara MT.  
A bit of Rose's dialogue near the end is adapted from a couple lines of the Doctor's in "School Reunion."  
This story is my penance for writing "Be Careful What You Wish For" (rated MA, available on my LJ; see my profile page for the link) and I am happy that it is only mildly evil in places. Can't say the same for my next project, which will be extremely evil.

* * *

The first time Rose returned from the dead, the Doctor was surprised. Or more accurately, he was shocked, because the word "surprised" implied a level of amazement about on a par with discovering a fly in one's pea soup. So rather, the Doctor was shocked when it happened. There he had been, standing over Rose's lifeless body on the glass planet Ekdorexiamicorlina, where she had been bitten by a poisonous Lepp Lizard in the year 5458. The poison had taken effect so quickly, the Doctor hadn't had time to seek an antidote. All he had been able to do was watch Rose die in precisely 1.09032894 seconds. As a Time Lord, he knew the exact decimals and thus took some slight comfort in knowing that Rose hadn't suffered for long. It might help Jackie to know that as well, he mused. Then, as he thought of Rose's mother, the Doctor winced.

On the plus side, he'd never have to tell Jackie that he and Rose were shagging (a conversation he'd been dreading because he knew it would result in a lot worse than a slap). On the minus side, he no longer had a girlfriend _to_ shag. On the whole, he thought he'd emerged the loser.

And that led him to a fresh train of unpleasant thought. Jackie was going to kill him for letting Rose die, and then he'd have gone through three bodies in two and a half years, which was _so_ not fair. They were supposed to last him a couple centuries apiece, at the least. At the rate he was going, he wouldn't make it another decade. Maybe he could just not tell Jackie about Rose for a while. Say, for about 40 more years. Rose wouldn't be any more or less dead then than she was now, so it wouldn't be doing any harm to delay the news a little.

Yeah, that sounded like a good plan. Then the Doctor calculated quickly. He wouldn't be able to visit Earth ever again between about the years 2006 and 2046. He was sure that if he set foot anywhere at all on the planet during that span, Jackie would somehow manage to show up at that precise spot, ferret out the story of her daughter's death, and demolish him beyond any hope of ever regenerating again. He would just have to hope that the TARDIS, which of course had a vested interest in his continued existence, cooperated in avoiding Earth. But at the moment, he had bigger problems on his hands.

His gaze returned to Rose's crumpled body, and a lump welled in his throat. He would have to bury her in a nice, safe, peaceful location on a planet other than Earth. Those requirements automatically ruled out virtually every place they had ever visited together, but he would come up with something. If all else failed, he could try Woman Wept. At least the name was apt.

The Doctor took a deep breath and prepared to gather up Rose's body to carry back to the TARDIS. As he stepped forward, though, his right shoe refused to move. It was glued to the rock below it by the innards of the evil lizard he had squashed in his fury following Rose's demise. With a grimace, the Doctor reached down to help free his trapped foot. When he looked back up, Rose's body was glowing bright silver. Then, in a flash, it seemed to explode before his eyes, leaving him temporarily blinded.

Moments later, when his vision cleared, the Doctor thought he was imagining things. Rose stood before him, looking just as she had before the lizard bite. In other words, alive and healthy and annoyed about being on a virtually shadeless planet with a temperature of 38 degrees. (Which had been an accident anyway; he'd been aiming for winter of 5358, with its relatively cool 30 degrees, but had missed by six months and the little matter of a century besides.)

"Rose?" he said tentatively, meanwhile noting that her clothes had reappeared with her. Pity, that.

She looked at him. "Yeah, Doctor, what is it?" She certainly sounded the same as she had pre-lizard bite.

The Doctor carefully reached out and touched her arm (solid and warm), and that decided him. "Rose, you were just dead," he said bluntly. "And now you're not."

She frowned and gingerly tested her limbs, which all seemed to work properly. "I know. I died, except somehow I was still _here_, and then I just re-formed myself." Then she turned back to the Doctor. "Hey, did I regenerate?"

"Don't be stupid, you're not a Time Lord," he replied automatically.

Rose scowled. "You're being rude again, and right after I died."

"Oh. Sorry. But it really was quite a stupid question," the Doctor reiterated. "Besides it being impossible for a human to regenerate, you look and sound exactly the same as you did before and display no signs of disorientation. But let's just make sure you're really okay. How many fingers?" He displayed a few.

"Three," Rose replied correctly.

"What planet are we on?"

"Ecuador something."

The Doctor shrugged. "Good enough." He hadn't really expected her to be able to pronounce the name anyway. "I wonder how you did come back, though."

"I think I might already know," Rose said slowly.

"You do? How?"

"I just do. It's like how you said you can feel the world turning underneath you. It's just something you know and feel. Well, I know why I'm alive again. It's connected to Bad Wolf. To the time vortex. I held the vortex inside me and it changed me forever. It brought me back to life today!"

About to be rude again and call that idea even stupider than her first one, the Doctor managed to restrain himself. "Well, even if that's what happened, watch out in future. This was a one-time thing. A fluke. It's never going to happen again, so don't go off being reckless. No more petting strange lizards, no matter what colour their skin is."

* * *

Three months later, having endured another visit to the Powell Estate (during which the subject of Rose's death conveniently failed to arise), the Doctor watched Rose die again. This time, she fell off a cliff.

It was an extremely idiotic thing, really. One moment, she had been walking beside him on a mountain trail in 28th-century Ireland, and the next moment she darted to the left to pick up an interesting stone, slipped over the edge, and was gone.

"Rose!" The Doctor ran to peer over the side of the trail. "Damn! Damn, damn, damn!" How could she do something so careless?

It was quite a long way down to the bottom of the cliff--surely no one could have survived a fall of that magnitude--but as he strained his eyes, he could almost swear he saw a burst of silver light far below him. He looked around wildly for a path leading downward, but saw nothing except sheer rock face all about him. Just as he was about to race back to the TARDIS, he saw a small figure picking its way up a path that led from the depths of the cliff to about halfway up. He was not nearly so surprised this time to see that it was Rose.

She climbed all the way to the end of the path before she yelled up to him. "Doctor?" Her faint voice barely reached her ears.

"What?" he screamed back.

"I think I just proved it wasn't a one-time thing!"

* * *

Back aboard the TARDIS, they sat down to discuss this second miraculous recovery.

Rose announced, "I think the vortex has given me unlimited lives. It makes sense."

"Oh, come on, Rose," the Doctor scoffed, unable to let this assertion pass unchallenged. "The vortex was inside me, too, even if it was only briefly. Do you think it had the same effect on me?"

"No, I think it's just me. It must work differently on a human than on a Time Lord. And you know what this means?" She jumped up and launched into a small victory dance. "No withering and dying for me! I rule!"

The Doctor sighed in exasperation. "Rose. Your theory is wrong. Now settle down, stop getting yourself killed, and let's go on a nice, quiet trip to Antigua." During which holiday, he intended to come up with the true answer.

* * *

Try as he might, though, the Doctor was unable to turn up a better explanation than Rose's for her newfound ability to return to life no matter how bizarrely she died. Even worse, this talent was accompanied by a strong tendency toward recklessness. For instance, the time Rose managed to get decapitated in ancient Rome was entirely preventable if only she hadn't insulted Emperor Caligula's horse. 

He was just a bit jealous of her, the Doctor discovered. This dying-and-coming-back-to-life business had formerly been his exclusive domain, yet Rose had trumped him. Aside from her initial two deaths and the decapitation, she had now been run over by a lorry, drowned in the Alazian Sea, frozen to death, been struck by lightning, died of rabies, been smothered by a French dwarf, spontaneously combusted, been trampled by a herd of wildebeest, suffocated in a gold mine, and--in a nod to the Doctor's fourth incarnation--fallen off a radio telescope tower. Each time, she had rejuvenated, safe and sound. In less than a year, she'd already netted more lives than the Doctor would during his entire existence.

He would have been a lot more jealous, except that he was so glad she was alive. Plus, Rose's new talent was coming in handy. She had sacrificed her life for his several times--always claiming the experience of dying tickled rather than actually hurt--and took so much of the initiative during their adventures that more than once, the Doctor was left with the feeling that he should simply bring along popcorn and settle back to watch the show rather than attempt an active role.

Somewhere along the line, however, a terrible thought occurred to him that cast a pall over their time together. He knew this same thought would eventually occur to Rose, as well, and he dreaded that day.

When she asked him to come into the TARDIS study for a serious talk, he knew the time had arrived.

"You know, Doctor," she began, "over the last several months I've come to realise something, and it's pretty disturbing. You see, you can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you."

"Not fair!" the Doctor cried. "You can't use my own words against me!"

"I can if they're true," Rose replied sadly. "Because sooner or later, you'll use up the last few of your regenerations, and then I'll have to live on and on and on, all alone."

The Doctor deflated. When Rose was right, she was right. "I can't argue with that," he agreed. "So, I suppose this means you're breaking up with me so as to avoid the emotional agony my final death would cause you." He began to get up, intending to pack his things and leave, before he remembered that it was _his_ TARDIS, and the person doing the packing and leaving would have to be Rose. At least, he consoled himself, their relationship had been unique. It marked the first time a companion was leaving him because of _his_ mortality, rather than theirs. "Whenever you're ready, I'll take you back home," he offered.

"Home?" Rose stared at him. "What do you mean, home? And what's this about breaking up? All we have to do is find that Fountain of Everlasting Life that's rumoured to be on Gregorian Major, and we can be together forever."

This time, the Doctor was decidedly not surprised to learn that Rose was again correct, a Fountain of Everlasting Life did indeed exist, and they were fated to be together forever, and ever, and ever, and ever...


End file.
